Kids Choice Awards sets another ratings record

Kimberly Nordyke

3 Min Read

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards broke ratings records for yet another year as 7.4 million viewers tuned in for the 90-minute ceremony, Nielsen Media Research said Tuesday.

The show, whose 21st edition aired live from UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion Saturday evening, has seen viewership grow every year since 2003. Last year’s event drew 6.1 million viewers.

While viewership this year was up 22%, the portion of viewers aged 2 to 11 rose 11 percent to a record 3.8 million. This year’s telecast also broke records in kids 6-11 (2.9 million, up 2%) and tweens 9-14 (2.7 million, up 4%).

The event, hosted by Jack Black, also was the No. 1 program on all of television for the week ended March 30, with kids and tweens as well as the No. 1 cable show among total viewers. It also set an online record, giving Nick.com to its most-trafficked day Saturday (1.7 million unique visitors and 27.1 million page views) and bringing in a record 89.3 million votes across various Nick digital platforms, a 119% increase over last year.

Spurred by the awards, Nickelodeon won all kid demos during the first quarter, finishing first among 2-11, 6-11 and 9-14.

Meanwhile, the Showtime drama “The Tudors” returned with its second-season premiere Sunday, drawing 768,000 viewers, a 12% drop from the series premiere (April 1, 2007) but 65% higher than the first-season finale (June 10). Adding numbers from the 11 p.m. encore puts total viewership for “The Tudors” at slightly more than 1 million viewers Sunday night.

Also debuting Sunday on Showtime was “Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union,” which drew 776,000 viewers over two airings (10 and 10:30 p.m.). By comparison, the debut night of Showtime’s comedy series “Californication” was only slightly higher, drawing 795,000 on a Monday in August.

Elsewhere, Part 2 of Lifetime Movie Network’s first original miniseries, “The Capture of the Green River Killer,” on Monday broke the viewership records set by Part 1 the previous night. Part 2 averaged 2.4 million total viewers — a network record — up 17% from the first installment.